McCain Asks Apple to Stop Making Him Update His Apps

The Arizona senator gets feisty with CEO Tim Cook during a Senate panel's grilling of top Apple brass over the company's offshore tax avoidance practices.

It wasn't the most germane back-and-forth during a Senate panel's grilling of Apple's top brass over the company's offshore tax avoidance practices, but it may have been the funniest.

Sen. John McCain, chairman and ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, was ending his questioning Apple CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday when he began grumbling about Apple pushing out updates to his iPhone.

"I'm out of time but what I really wanted to ask was why the hell I have to keep updating apps on my iPhone all the time and why you don't fix that," the Arizona Republican said.

"Sir, we try to make them better all the time," Cook replied, both men smiling broadly during the exchange.

Other senators were much more charitable to Apple, or at least its technology, during the subcommittee's panel session, as noted by the Huffington Post, which highlighted Sen. Claire McCaskill's declaration, "I love Apple!" Sens. Carl Levin and Kelly Ayotte, meanwhile, gushed about their iPads during breaks and during the hearing itself, the Atlantic reported.

But the senators weren't so kind when it came to talking about Apple's offshore cash storage practices, which are legal but have cost the U.S. Treasury billions in revenue, according to members of subcommittee.

Levin, who called Apple's practices the "holy grail" of offshore tax avoidance, took the company to task for subsidiaries that the Michigan Democrat said exist solely to avoid additional taxation in the U.S: Apple Operations International (AOI), Apple Sales International (ASI), and Apple Operations Europe (AOE).

Closing loopholes in the U.S. tax code that make this legal could means billions for the U.S. Treasury, Levin said, which could be dedicated to "other important priorities."

Cook defended his company's operations, arguing that Apple gives plenty to the U.S. Treasury. When questioned by McCain about the management of subsidiaries like AOI, Cook maintained that everything was above board. Still, "I'd like comprehensive tax reform to be passed this year," Cook said.

You can see McCain's complaint about app updates below, courtesy of Talking Points Memo.

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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